


a little something in our lemonade

by fictionalcandie



Series: superhero soul mates [2]
Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Gen, Implied Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-18
Updated: 2015-10-18
Packaged: 2018-04-27 00:25:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5026585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fictionalcandie/pseuds/fictionalcandie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Maria said that you weren’t listening to her, and you appeared to be trying to drink yourself to death,” Peggy says.</p><p>“Not to <em>death</em>,” Howard says, rolling his eyes.</p><p>“No?”</p><p>“Just <em>insensible</em>.”</p><p>“I see,” says Peggy. She reaches out, tips the bourbon bottle with one finger on the mouth of it, just enough to get a look at the label. After a moment, she settles it back on the desk and pulls her hand back to her lap. “And what fate is so awful that avoiding its contemplation warrants the Steven Grant Rogers vintage?”</p><p>“Soul bonds,” he tells Peggy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a little something in our lemonade

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little interlude ficlet this time, but it's leading up to the exciting, bigger fics, I promise.
> 
> Huge thanks to [duva](http://archiveofourown.org/users/duva) for the super speedy and excellent beta. Title is from the song _Fake Empire_ by The National.

Howard doesn’t know how long it’s been since Maria last came in to yell at him. He thought she went to bed a while ago, though he knows she isn’t asleep—the sense of her he gets through the bond hasn’t faded to the muted rhythms of dreaming. He can still feel her irritation and concern, loud and clear, as if she’d just walked out the door a moment ago.

He’s had enough bourbon to admit that he’s not tracking things so well.

But it must have been a while. Long enough, anyway, for her to have Edwin call Peggy, because when the door opens again that’s who steps through.

She’s his age and more—and Edwin _had_ to have pulled her out of bed, whatever hour this actually is—but she doesn’t look it. Her steel-grey hair is twisted back without a strand out of place, and her suit is wrinkle free and fits her just the way it ought to. Closer to seventy than sixty, and she still puts half the dames he knows to shame.

“If it isn’t the good Director herself,” he greets, lifting his glass in a toast.

Her right eyebrow twitches as though he was mocking her. She knows better than to think that.

“Howard,” she says.

“To what do I owe the honor?”

“Maria rang me,” Peggy says.

Howard allows himself a slow blink of surprise that is, perhaps, a little longer than he means it to be. “Huh,” he mumbles. “She skipped the Jarvis step, this time.”

“She did,” Peggy confirms. She crosses the room, stopping beside him. She gives his desk a pointed, steady glare, until he shuffles papers, glass, and bottle enough to clear a place for her to perch on the edge near him.

“She must’ve given you an earful,” he says.

“Mm. Specifically, she told me to put you in bed, or put you in the ground.”

Howard winces. “Not the nicest thing she’s ever said about me.”

“Indeed,” Peggy says.

She doesn’t look fazed—but she wouldn’t, would she, having been around for every horrifying low point he’d reached back when he was still accepting that not only did he have a soul mate, but she was two decades his junior and worth at least three of him.

“She tell you what was wrong?” Howard asks.

“She said that you weren’t listening to her, and you appeared to be trying to drink yourself to death,” Peggy says, blunt as ever, God and Sousa love her.

“Not to _death_ ,” Howard says, rolling his eyes.

“No?”

“Just _insensible_.”

“I see,” says Peggy. She reaches out, tips the bourbon bottle with one finger on the mouth of it, just enough to get a look at the label. After a moment, she settles it back on the desk and pulls her hand back to her lap. “And what fate is so awful that avoiding its contemplation warrants the Steven Grant Rogers vintage?”

At the reminder, Howard scowls, and takes a slug of the sixty-nine year old bourbon in his glass. It may be older than he is, but there’s a _purpose_ to drinking this particular bottle. There’s _justice_ to it—or, something, anyway. Call it a plea, a cry to the universe for mercy, whatever. It had made plenty of sense when he’d started.

“Soul bonds,” he tells Peggy.

One of her eyebrows raises a little, but comes down again right away. “I thought we agreed that Maria was the best thing the universe ever did for you,” she says, not ungently.

“Not me,” Howard snaps. “ _Tony_.”

This time, Peggy’s eyebrows both go up. “I thought his eighteenth birthday wasn’t until—”

“Next week. It isn’t,” Howard says.

There’s a long pause.

“Are you worried about it coming in?” she asks, at last.

“No,” Howard announces, “I’m worried that it _won’t_.”

“Oh.”

“He’s already so _different_ , even than all the other rich kids at that goddamn boarding school of his,” Howard explains, shaking his head. He stares hard at the tail end of the amber liquid in his glass, so he doesn’t have to look at Peggy. “It’s my fault, I know that. I always encouraged him—came out of the womb already too smart for his own good, and I just pushed him to be _smarter_ , further and further.”

“Howard,” Peggy tries.

Howard doesn’t want to hear it, though, whatever it is. He really just—doesn’t. He doesn’t know that he’s ever said this, to anyone, except maybe in pieces to Edwin during some other escape into a bottle, and this is. Well. It’s his biggest shame and his proudest accomplishment, all at once. It’s complicated.

Like everything about his only child.

“That’s what _made_ me, though,” Howard says, talking over Peggy and still not looking at her. “My brain’s what got me where I am today, you know it is, and he’s—he could be so much _more_ than I am, someday, I’ve always known it, but I haven’t done him any favors in the here-and-now, trying to get him there.”

“I see,” Peggy says, and she’s _Peggy Carter_ , so maybe she actually does. “And you think his bond not coming in on his birthday—”

“Not coming in _ever_ ,” Howard corrects.

“That not having a soul bond,” she goes on, with barely a stumble, “you think that would be the step too far? The straw that breaks the camel’s back?”

He nods. “I know it would.”

“Howard, I understand the concern,” Peggy soothes. Her hand, soft and warm and still strong despite the wrinkles and ages spots, settles on his bare forearm where he’s rolled up his shirtsleeve. “I do. I remember, Daniel and I were concerned, too, when it looked like—”

“Yeah, yeah, your daughter’s didn’t come until she was twenty-two, I know. But it _did_ come in, and your son’s did right away,” Howard snaps. “You don’t know what it’s like to live thinking you haven’t got one. You don’t know how people treat you.”

“Steve was bondless, and he—”

“Yeah, right,” Howard says. He snorts, sharp and derisive, and finally looks at her again, so that he can give her a decent glare. “C’mon, Peg, are we really still spouting that old line?”

Peggy’s lips press together until they go thin.

“You saw him and Barnes together, same as I did,” says Howard. He raises his eyebrows. “He wasn’t any more bondless than I am.”

“All of his records state that—”

“Yeah, and his actions say that he _wasn’t_ ,” Howard says.

“Howard,” she starts.

“What he did, going behind the lines like that, that’s something you do for your soul mate, not just some buddy from home. I mean, really. Is there anybody _you’d_ take that risk for?”

Peggy’s chin comes up a few degrees. “I would have taken it for Steve,” she says. “And so would you have.”

Howard flops a hand through the air. “Anybody would have done _that_. Somebody _other_ than Captain goddamn America. Would you do it for Sousa?”

“I would walk through heavy fire for my husband, as you well know.”

“Yeah. Exactly.”

“ _And_ I’d do the same for any of my people, if the odds were good that they—”

“No, no, none of that. The odds _weren’t_ good, the odds Barnes was still alive were the _worst_ , and Steve went in anyway. That’s soul mate shit, Peggy.”

“They never _once_ even hinted that they were—”

“Barnes died and it _broke_ him,” Howard interrupts in a snarl.

Peggy draws in a sharp breath, her lips thinning again. It’s even worse this time. Howard doesn’t care, he’s _right_ and he _doesn’t care_.

“You know it’s true. He was like a different man after Barnes fell.”

“They were friends,” Peggy says, too sharp, and it’s only because Howard _knows_ she’s not that blind that it stops him, makes him remember that they’re part of a secret organization which knows for a _fact_ there could be ears anywhere, at any time, and that there are some secrets which should stay secrets. Some choices that should be honored even after the people who made them are gone.

“Right,” he says, instead of what he’d been about to. “Friends.” And, unable to let it go completely, he adds in a mutter, “Because that’s how _friends_ act.”

He’s oozing sarcasm out of ever pour, but it’ll have to do. That’s the best Peggy’s getting.

She seems to sense it, because she lets out a long, slow breath, and shakes her head at him.

“What,” he demands.

“We’ve enough troubles in the world without you borrowing more,” Peggy says. “Stop worrying.”

Howard snorts. “Easy for you to say,” he mutters, reaching for the bottle of bourbon.

Peggy takes it out of his grasp just before his hand can close around it. “ _Enough_ , Howard. Go to bed.”

Howard scowls at her.

“You’re keeping your wife up,” Peggy says. “She’s got a charity brunch in the morning, and your fretting won’t let her sleep.”

Guilt of a new sort creeps up in around Howard’s edges. He sighs.

“All right, I’m going,” he grumbles, feeling like a naughty little kid getting sent off to bed by his nanny.

Peggy favors him with a smile, small and soft, wistful with all their shared ghosts behind it. “Be sure to tell Maria I threatened to shoot you.”

“She’ll be amazed you didn’t actually do it,” Howard promises, getting up to do as he’s told.

On his feet, already pointed toward the door, Howard pauses. “Heya, Peg?” he asks.

“Yes?”

“If Tony’s bondless—”

“Howard,” she protests, weariness in her voice that he feels right down to his bones.

They’re getting old, him and Peg. The last of them all.

“If he _is_ ,” Howard bulls forward, “you’ll help me look out for him, right? Me and Maria and Jarvis can’t do _everything_ for willful young geniuses.”

Peggy makes a noise, and without looking at her, Howard can’t tell if it was a sigh or a groan or a laugh. “Certainly not if they’re as arrogant as their fathers,” she says.

“Yeah,” he agrees, because it’s only the truth.

“Of course I will, if it comes to it,” she says. “You have my word.”

Not a thing to be taken lightly.

“Thank you,” Howard says. It comes out quiet, and solemn. He didn’t mean for it to, but maybe it’s better that way.

This time, it’s definitely a laugh Peggy lets out, quiet as it is. “You’re welcome,” she says, in the same tone. “But you won’t need it, you know. Tony’ll get his soul bond, you’ll see.”

“If you says so,” Howard says, not believing it for a second.

He knows better than anyone how Stark luck runs.

#

Howard doesn’t get the chance to tell Peggy he told her so. He dies surrounded by the crunch of metal and the shattering of glass, reaching out for his wife, when their son is twenty-one and still bondless. 


End file.
